Free Star Force: Headstrong (SF72) by Aer-ki Jyr

sitting and
wallowing in discomfort…that and he didn’t want to attract any more attention.
    Making sure he was tightly closed up he jogged forward
and very lightly hit the wall head on, rolling to the left and over to the
pedestal. He didn’t even look at the score, resetting it and going back to try
again. With each repetition the pain got less and less to the point where he
was able to start processing what Kleeva had been
saying pre-flirt.
    Right now he had to go slow, and that restriction made
him realize she was right. He was worrying too much about his appearance and
needed to work this from the slow end up. Now that he literally had no pride
left there was no shame in taking these runs slow and trying to work on his impact
deflection angles.
    Turning his brain off to everything else he just
repeated the drill more times than he knew until he accidentally set a new
personal best combined score…and at a lower speed than he had been attempting
before. Frowning, he reset the drill and did it again, getting almost the exact
same score, only 1 point lower. Jenran did it four more times the exact same way,
ruling out the possibility that it was just an accident, then he hit the reset
again and took his start position, the pain of his collision now almost
entirely gone.
    He took off at full speed and tried to apply the same
technique he’d been using to this attempt, not expecting to succeed but hoping
to see that something had changed. When he hit the wall he bounced off randomly
again, but he flopped onto the ground and got to his feet well enough and
tagged the pedestal, seeing that the kinetic impact was decent, but more
importantly he’d been able to feel his error on contact. There was no way he
could have controlled it, but he wasn’t numbing up for that moment of impact
like he had been before.
    Now that he could ‘see’ what was occurring he knew he
could learn to do it like the others. In retrospect he realized he’d just been
trying for too much and hadn’t allowed his senses to calibrate to the hard
impacts. He’d been mentally flinching with each but now, having let his mind
gradually adjust to harder and harder impacts, he could go through it ‘eyes
open,’ which he tested with several more runs before slowing down again and
picking up from where he’d left off on his gradual improvement, now confident
that he’d be able to get this within the next few days.
    When he eventually quit he realized he’d spend the
past 4 hours in the gym. He’d expected to be there half an hour and had to rush
several other training elements before reporting for mandatory scripted
sessions. He didn’t like having screwed up his morning’s workouts, but realized
that the tradeoff was more than worth it. He’d made a huge rookie mistake and
now was wise to it, with the ironic part being that he probably wouldn’t have
gained that insight if Kleeva hadn’t embarrassed him
with that accidental collision.
    He’d heard stories of accidental training insights
from others, and now it seemed he had one of his own to tell. He liked that,
but more so he liked the increased capability it would give him, for he could
apply the same insight to other areas even after he mastered the head ram. It
was one of the unique combat tactics to the Protovic and he’d been feeling inadequate
for not being able to do it up to requirements. His scores weren’t high enough
to meet them yet, but it was just a matter of time now that he knew his mistake
had been countered.
    Regardless of any sexual liaison with Kleeva that would result from this, his crotch knock had
been worth it. He knew he’d never say that in the moment of pain, but it was
now past and he still had his training insight going forward. It had sucked,
and he wouldn’t be living down that stigma anytime soon, but on the battlefield
things like that didn’t matter. Skill and ability did, and he’d just increased
his slightly, however accidental it might have